The freshest pretzels in New York can now be found at the South Street Seaport. They are firm, flavorful, salty, twisted into dizzying shapes and meant to be devoured, for sure, but only with the eyes. These pretzels are made of human flesh and more apt to stimulate appetites than to sate them.

If the televised Olympics are too sanitary and the hole-in-the-wall strip clubs too sleazy for your tastes, then perhaps you’ll find voyeuristic contentment in the between ground (or should I say air?) occupied by “Désir,” the literally high-flying exercise in body bending that’s playing in a mirrored tent on the southern tip of Manhattan.

The latest offering from Spiegelworld, the circus-cum-cabaret that first set up its version of summer camp here two years ago, “Désir” is not to be confused with the better-known “Absinthe,” with which it runs in repertory through Nov. 2. “Absinthe” is adults-only vaudeville, an amalgam of songs, jokes and acrobatic routines. While retaining the Spiegelworld signature impurity of thought, “Désir” aspires to a greater purity of style. It is 80 minutes of wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling gymnastics, executed by a young, comely and exceedingly supple cast of more than a dozen, which wordlessly acts out “La Ronde”-style series of liaisons.

The press handouts have it that “Désir” takes place backstage at “the world’s greatest nightclub” in Paris in the early 20th century, though this is not exactly self-evident in the show. Still, the thrust of the plot, such as it is, is pretty clear: Boy meets girl meets girl meets boy meets boy. ... Well, you know how these daisy chains develop.

Directed by Wayne Harrison, with choreography by John O’Connell, “Désir” allows its attractive ensemble members to contort themselves  alone and in assorted combinations  into a variety of improbable positions that you probably should not try at home with your loved one. Some of these occur on trapezes, some on other people’s shoulders, some on a giant ottoman, others on a bare stage.

Unlike its hard-bodied performers, the structure of “Désir” can occasionally sag. Instead of building to and highlighting big moments, it tends to drift a tad distractedly from scene to scene. And there are times when it suggests a Las Vegas-made marriage of Cirque du Soleil and a Victoria’s Secret runway show.

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The Hula-Hoop virtuoso Marawa Ibrahim in Désir, at Pier 17.Credit...Richard Termine for The New York Times

But the cast members exude the irresistible narcissism found in self-aware beauties and star athletes as they go through their often jaw-dropping paces to a mixed decades-spanning, artfully kitschy soundtrack, overseen by Josh Abrahams. (There is also a long-stemmed vocalist, Maria Victoria Di Pace.) The most arduous routines, from one-handed handstands to aerial jackknifes, are usually concluded with a sly, cool, “that was nothing” glance at the audience.

For the record, there is no full nudity nor anything approaching the pornographic, despite the various couplings and triplings of the acrobats. “Désir” summons a time when nightclub and burlesque shows were less a matter of show and tell than tantalizing promise.

Fatally attractive figures of many decades ago, including the man-eating courtesan and Folies-Bergère star La Belle Otero and the actress-aviatrix Raymonde de Laroche, are evoked through costumes and mimetic postures. (Pierre-Louis Pierson’s famous eye-framing photograph of the ever-evolving, presciently surrealistic fashion plate the Countess de Castiglione is recreated here.)

A banana-skirted virtuoso of the Hula-Hoop named Marawa Ibrahim blissfully reincarnates Josephine Baker as channeled by Betty Boop. Mistinguett’s sadomasochistic apache dance lives to fight again through the bodies of Genevieve Morin and Antoine Auger. The marble-torsoed Mr. Auger, who might have stepped from a Calvin Klein underwear campaign, recreates the muscle-flexing Joseph Pilates before he became a brand name, then sends up his own strong-man image in a witty take on a fraudulent sideshow act with Raphaelle Boitel. Four fresh-faced Russian teenagers in czarist sailor outfits stack themselves like perilous domino towers.

The woman who accompanied me to “Désir” observed that it’s a show that demands you develop crushes on individual performers, whom you start to watch with a proprietary eye. The choice is considerable, from the truly ravishing Ms. Boitel, who might have sat for Klimt in Vienna, to Olaf Triebel, whose strapping sailor boy brings to mind a fantasy out of Genet.

More than any show in New York I can think of, “Désir,” with its cavalcade of professional beauties, does inspire thoughts of a time when well-dressed admirers queued up at dressing-room doors bearing gifts of flowers and jewelry. As for me, I’m thinking of coming back with a bouquet of catnip for that charming, fluffy-haired Persian who stopped the show when it walked a tightrope.